Buffalo Announces The “Serious Game Design Competition”

This is nice to see, especially after decades of seeing the mainstream media constantly ripping into the video game industry.

Buffalo, New York mayor Byron Brown has announced a "Serious Game Design Competition," asking novice creators to build a game about the city of Buffalo that "teaches life skills, highlights the importance of diversity, and is fun to play." They also want you to create a game that's playable on multiple formats (console, smartphone, tablet, etc.).

The first stage runs between March 20 and 22 at the Buffalo Game Space in the Tri-Main Building Suite. Designers only have those two days to make the game, so they need to act quickly. The top three finalists of the first round receive prizes of $1,250, $750, and $500 respectively, and they move on to round two. That event takes place in April and the three finalists have to submit their games to a panel of expert judges.

The grand prize is $5,000 and maybe the game will actually be released to the public at a later date. As Przemyslaw "P.J." Moskal, Associate Professor in the Department of Digital Media Arts at Canisius College, said:

"I'm excited and surprised that the mayor proposed this type of competition because it rarely comes from government. We’re like underground game developers in Buffalo, and all of a sudden the mayor's office is contacting us to do this. So that was really, really great."